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ARIMA Arrives at FICM Alongside its Director Jaione Camborda

Brisa Naomi R. L.

As part of the 24th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), filmmaker Jaione Camborda presented Arima, her debut feature film. During her encounter with festival attendees, the filmmaker and winner of the Concha de Oro expressed her honor at being in Morelia to showcase her work, and mentioned her deep interest in relationships between women, viewing them as essential networks of survival—clandestine spaces on the margins of dominant and violent structures that offer support, solidarity, and resistance.

The film tells the story of a small group of women and a young girl in a rural Galician village whose lives are transformed by the arrival of a couple of mysterious and unknown groups. Drawing inspiration from psychological drama, the thriller genre, and horror cinema, the film operates according to its own poetic logic to question the divisions between what is real and what is fantastical, as well as between what is seen and what must be intuited.

She reflected on the creative process behind the film, emphasizing that the construction of her stories prioritizes instinctive and sensory exploration over traditional conventions. Faced with the challenges of independent production, Camborda underscored the importance of placing women’s perspectives and experiences at the center of the narrative, making intimacy, nature, and sisterhood the fundamental pillars of her cinematic language.

The filmmaker pointed out that the conceptual core of the work revolves around the gaze and perception. From the opening scene—“where an eye directly confronts the viewer”—the film seeks to engage the audience and make them active participants in a profound and mysterious visual landscape. Through devices such as mirrors and exchanged glances between the female characters, the film explores otherness and the way identities feed into one another.

In terms of narrative, the film moves unusually along the line between the imaginary and the real, guided largely by the perspective of a young girl learning to discover the world around her. The director explained that working with the child protagonist required creating an atmosphere of trust and play on set, drawing on the actress’s sensitivity and observational skills to address themes of vulnerability and growth.

The filmmaker also addressed the challenges posed by the project’s lengthy development. As a self-managed, low-budget production supported by local television and organizations in Galicia, the screenplay underwent multiple revisions over the years to adapt to the characters’ maturation and financial constraints.

One of the most complex and defining aspects of the director’s work was its lengthy gestation period, which took more than ten years to come to fruition. Despite the production challenges, the director emphasized the importance of taking creative risks and finding one’s own voice in independent film, prioritizing artistic exploration and authenticity over traditional conventions.